Synanon Kid: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

by C. A. Wittman

  While Sara received sympathy for her plight from her peers, I found myself even more estranged from mine than I had been before. Over the years I’d accepted that I wasn’t well liked, but now the bristling hostility that emanated from the other kids became especially hurtful in light of the situation. When it had appeared that I might be leaving Synanon, no party had been planned for my departure, and no one had seemed to care. The incident made me aware of how despised I really was. I also didn’t know where Theresa and Ray were. They were suddenly nowhere to be found on the property. Had they already left?

  I ignored the teasing about my moving debacle. Days went by, and I thought about how close I’d come to moving away from Synanon, to finally living with my mother again. I imagined what our life could have been like had we gotten the chance to live in our own home like normal people. I’d have gone to a real school, and when school the day had ended, I’d have gone home, where Theresa would be waiting. She’d ask me how my day went and we’d eat dinner that she’d cooked. I thought about how irritated I’d been with Theresa lately and felt sorry that I’d wasted time feeling angry with her, not knowing that I’d probably never see her again. Other times I thought about myself as an adult with the right to leave if I wanted. Would I be able to survive on my own? For a long while I’d had the nagging suspicion that I wasn’t learning anything of real value that would help me to survive as an adult without Synanon.

  Almost two weeks passed before the next announcement broadcasted on the Wire: “Take them! Take your kids and get out!”

  Several hours later, a demonstrator told me to pack my things. “You and Sara leave tomorrow morning.”

  I tried to keep my feelings in check as I reassembled the boxes and placed my things inside them. I hoped, really hoped, that this time it was true.

  When Ray and Theresa were finally allowed contact with Sara and me, they told us that all the tough talk about keeping us in the commune was just hot air. With no parents staying behind, Synanon could not legally claim us.

  Ray’s ex-wife, Mary Ann, contacted her family in Santa Clara and asked if we might stay with them, explaining our situation. We could not stay with Ray’s parents because they lived far away in Arizona, and his mother did not accept Ray’s relationship with Theresa. She thought of my mother as nothing but a “quadroon,” a disparaging term for a person who is one-quarter black by ancestry, and of me as “that dark girl.”

  Nor could we stay with my mother’s parents because of old issues she had with both of them. We had no money to speak of and nowhere to go. Sara, who had always been a good saver, offered her father a hundred dollars that she had tucked away, and Ray, unbeknownst to the other community members, possessed a handful of silver dollars. Mary Ann’s family kindly agreed to take us in, and a little later my grandfather grudgingly gave Theresa a thousand dollars.

  We left early one morning in late October 1981, two weeks after my eleventh birthday. The Synacruiser sat waiting for us, and we loaded our few belongings onto the bus before boarding ourselves. There was no one around to offer any goodbye.

  Sara and I sat next to each other, staring quietly through the window at a pale, watery sky as the bus started up, yawning and creaking to life. Our vehicle moved forward slowly, crunching gravel as we edged down the road that wound its way through the property. The entrance gates stood open, flanked by armed men. Sara turned away from the window, a smile settling in her brown eyes. She took my hand, squeezing it, and we began to laugh.

  Ray, his face thick with stubble, the skin stretched gaunt over sunken cheeks, eyes shadowed with dark circles from the tension of the past two weeks, hugged my mom, who nuzzled against his chest while he affectionately stroked her dark head.

  “Goodbye, Synanon!” Sara sang out.

  Yes. Goodbye.

  A Short History of Synanon

  In 1958 an old storefront in Ocean Park, California, on the Promenade was rented as a clubhouse for an unlikely group of members: The Tender Loving Care Club, later known as Synanon, specifically for people suffering from alcohol and drug addiction. Spearheaded by a dynamic and driven man named Charles Dederich, commonly known as Chuck, more than 25,000 people would filter through Synanon’s doors over the commune’s thirty-plus year life span.

  During the cult’s development, drug rehabilitation became just one of Synanon’s many objectives as it expanded into building its own social and environmental awareness agenda through increasingly monitored and micromanaged lifestyle experimentation. Clean living, environmental consciousness, philosophical studies, interracial community and experimental childrearing were just some of the issues tackled both in theory and action. This “new” paradigm of collectivist and socialist structure attracted more than just dope fiends; college graduates, white-collar professionals, celebrities and wealthy donors also flocked to Synanon. These new members, called lifestylers, looked to Synanon as a kind of utopia. Synanon properties would grow to expand beyond Santa Monica, to Marin County, San Francisco, Oakland, and Visalia, California. There would also be property in Lake Havasu, Arizona, New York, and Berlin, Germany.

  During the 1960s many social issues had come to a head: the civil rights movement, women’s rights, environmental concerns, the Vietnam War, a rejection of orthodox religions and an embracing of Eastern spirituality, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism. Conservatism was also sweeping the country, increasingly young adults were becoming polarized in their beliefs, some following the status quo, others questioning the norms of the day and demanding change. Communes were often attractive to people because they offered neatly packaged solutions to pressing social concerns.

  Synanon was among a number of private communities birthed around this time. Chuck Dederick, being a fervent admirer of the philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson and the psychologist Abraham Maslow, embraced Maslow’s theory of psychological health and self-actualization and Emerson’s philosophy on self-reliance. Chuck preached resourcefulness and independence, inspired by these two men and structured Synanon philosophy from the literary works of Maslow and Emerson while many of the unusual and bizarre actions taken by Synanon members were direct and unyielding dictates from Chuck as well. Throughout its lifespan, Synanon would be a dichotomy of self-actualization and mind control. People were encouraged to think for themselves and be innovative, yet never question Chuck, no matter how strange, disturbing or traumatizing to their lives some of his demands were. This schizophrenic mindset would create an emotional and psychological turmoil for many community members.

  Over time, the organization grew corrupt and violent. Chuck, once a maverick for positive change, devolved into an egomaniac, wreaking havoc on his members’ lives through unyielding commands often issued from his selfish whims. These dogmatic orders would have detrimental effects on Synanonites. Ultimately, the community would return full circle, residents succumbing to the abuse of alcohol and drugs that earlier members had once fought so doggedly to overcome.

  Synanon fell to its demise in 1991. However, the approach of attack therapy such as The Game” and other abusive techniques established to control and straighten out the youth of Synanon are still in use in many troubled-teen programs that exist today. Some of these programs, such as Straight Inc. and The Seed, have been shut down by legal order after being subjected to lawsuits over various charges of mental, physical and emotional abuse. Although some scholarly studies have shown aggressive-style encounter groups to have an adverse psychological effect on participants, these tough-love teen programs continue to thrive and flourish. Maia Szalavitz speaks to this very issue in her book Help at any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids (2006). She explores much of the background and history of the troubled-teen big-business phenomenon in America, discussing techniques used in some of these programs that stem directly from Synanon.

  When the Synanon school began, the best and brightest teachers of the commune worked with the children; the intention was to inspire our capacity for innovative and phil
osophical thinking. Parents were regularly involved, and the school was often likened to Israel’s kibbutzim (agricultural collectivist communities with socialistic economies). In a kibbutz, as in Synanon, children lived in separate houses and parents visited their children several hours each day. However, by the 1970s, kibbutzim were moving away from this model, and family members once again lived with one another. In Synanon, the opposite was true as the community became more antagonistic toward the traditional family structure.

  Parents were expected to support this devolution in Synanon philosophy. They were ordered to spend less time at the school. Chuck and other VIPs who parroted his distorted opinions lectured parents about their involvement with their children, shaming moms in particular by calling them “soul-sucking” and detrimental to children’s health. Parents were “gamed,” i.e., screamed at by their peers, for such indiscretions as “poisoning” their children by taking too much interest in their welfare. Mothers deemed too maternal were called “head suckers.”

  By the time I arrived in February 1977, Synanon was at its most violent stage as a result of Chuck’s growing paranoia of anything or anyone that wasn’t part of Synanon. The fact that he had walled himself off in his self-created society, immune from any criticism from “his people,” led him to become ever more delusional and Orwellian in his thoughts and ideas for what a Synanon lifestyle should be.

  The school had devolved into an orphanage of sorts. Parents by then were encouraged to stay away and give up their children completely to the community. Amid the expensive lawsuits Synanon was fighting at the time, and due to the expense required to care for the children, Chuck began to view us as useless. Synanon children, Chuck complained, could not be put to work like the teenagers of the cult, yet we ate and took up space, contributing nothing of value while using community resources.

  Instead of the best and brightest teachers, adults were sometimes assigned haphazardly to different positions in the school, teaching academic subjects in which they had no training. Rules and lessons were often random, incongruous with principles of developmental growth. The Synanon school’s style was a paradox of militaristic rigidity and strict rules infused with intermittent periods of autonomy absent of adult oversight altogether.

  For me, the “school” created a dissociative independent type of personality. To cope with the constant barrage of verbal attacks, whether directed at me, heard in passing, or on the Wire, the Synanon radio, I became adept at mentally detaching myself from my environment.

  Despite Synanon’s ambition to destroy the parent-child bond, my mother in bits and pieces, through letters and sometimes clandestine visits, communicated her affections to me, emotional inoculations that helped to foster a sense of strength and hope within myself that the cult could not conquer.

  There has been quite a lot written about Synanon. They are memoirs, historical and philosophical literature, and scores of articles; however, the point of view is almost always from that of an adult who came to the community of his or her volition looking to escape the ills of modern American society. Of the children raised in Synanon, there is little written on what it was like for us growing up in the commune.

  Here I offer my own story. I do not speak for all children raised in the community; this is a memoir of my journey. For the sake of privacy and respect for others, I have changed most of the names.

  Acknowledgments

  First and foremost, I would like to thank my mother for helping me to tell this story. When I first began writing Synanon Kid in 2013, she generously spent many hours on the phone with me, answering all of my questions and sharing her perspective of our peculiar past. My children have all been wonderful in taking time to read several drafts and giving me valuable constructive criticism.

  In 2014, I contacted Paul Morantz, the attorney who litigated Synanon on multiple counts and who Chuck Dederich attempted to murder by ordering two Synanon men to place a rattle snake in his mailbox. Paul has kept a dedicated blog of Synanon history and legal matters for many years, as well as writing two books on the cult: Escape: My Lifelong War Against Cults, which features Synanon among other organizations whose leaders turned malevolent and destructive toward their members, and From Miracle to Madness, a thorough anthology of Synanon history and a careful log of every legal issue Synanon ever had.

  Paul was kind enough to have me over to his home and to read one of my earlier drafts over the course of an evening. He took notes, invited me back and sat with me for five hours telling me what he thought worked and what didn’t. I am very grateful for Paul’s honesty when he told me the manuscript still needed a lot of work. He was generous with his time and offered up the resources of his extensive library, which held a wealth of information about Synanon. I have found both of Paul’s books and his blog a great resource of Synanon history. I have also supplied my memoir with facts from William Olin’s memoir Escape from Utopia: My Ten Years in Synanon and David U. Gerstel’s Paradise Incorporated: Synanon—A Personal Account, my mother’s Kidsnatcher notebook and one of Chuck’s manifestos, On Rearing Children: From a Synanon School Health and Welfare Massive Dose.

  I would also like to thank the editors who worked on Synanon Kid. My friend Jeffrey Turnbull worked as a copy editor on earlier drafts, and Marion Roach helped with developmental edits. In later drafts, Marcie Geffner offered her expertise of developmental and copy edits, and my daughter Viva Wittman has also contributed to copy edits. Michael McConnel has done the final proofread.

  I did not talk to anyone else who lived in Synanon, as I wanted to write from my own memories. I feel the recall of my own personal experiences and their lasting impressions lend an authenticity to my story that may have been muddled if I had collected my peers’ perspectives and memories.

  Finally, I am grateful for the serendipitous events that led me to visit the old Walker Creek property of Synanon in February 2017. My eldest daughter’s boyfriend spoke to her of a beautiful piece of land in Petaluma where he liked to go hiking and mentioned that he would like to take her with him sometime to experience it for herself. When he described the place, she realized that the property sounded awfully similar to the Synanon property where I had grown up. Her boyfriend knew the caretaker of the property and after looking into it, informed my daughter that indeed it was. The caretaker, Patrick, and his wife, Melissa, graciously took me, three of my children and their significant others on a tour of the property. This was the first time I had been back since I was eleven years old. It was surreal, to say the least, and disorienting, as many of the buildings had been torn down and in some instances new buildings erected in place of the old. The property has been turned into an outdoor science camp for elementary school students and is also rented out as a conference center and for special events like weddings. There had been much rain over the past year, and the hills were a lush green, not the dry golden grass that I remembered. An old barn, which I thought might have once been the play barn in my youth, still stood. Inside it was much smaller than I had remembered, which is often the case with childhood memories of places. We spent a few hours trekking through the property and Patrick told me that every so often someone drives up claiming to have lived there as a kid when it was Synanon. Patrick said he usually takes them around and listens to their stories. One man once told him fondly, “We kids used to have the run of this place. We roamed where we liked. It was fantastic.”

  About the Author

  C.A. Wittman grew up in Northern California. In 1993 she moved to Maui Hawaii where she raised her children. Synanon Kid is her second book. Currently she resides in Los Angeles with her husband Frank.

  Join my reading group at cawittman.com

  cawittman.com

  contact@cawittman.com

 

 

  r>